The Path She Chose
by ncfan
Summary: At the start, the tales were all she had. [Not canon-compliant.]


Hi. This is not a canon-compliant fic, in that I have major issues with Kaguya and with the last ten or so chapters of the manga, so my personal canon diverges from that. I don't go a whole lot into that, but there will be mentions of it towards the end, so if it strikes you as not matching up with canon, keep this note in mind. (I will say that this does not contain the canon pairings, so if that doesn't float your boat, consider this a warning.)

I own nothing.

* * *

><p>At the start, the tales were all she had of them.<p>

Well, that and Mama's string of pearls, one of the only valuables in her possession. Uzumaki Kaori laughed whenever she found her child slipping the pearls out of their hiding place, one of the few times Karin ever heard her mother laugh. Karin liked to pretend she was a daimyo or a clan head when she wore these pearls, or even a powerful priestess and the string of pearls was her rosary. She could even get her mother to play along, which was a lot more than could be said of the kids in their little village in Kusa no Kuni.

"That's a good impression, Karin," Mama said laughingly, "but you should hold your head up higher. A woman of standing always greets the world with boldness and without fear."

To Karin, that didn't sound like the few upper-class women she had ever seen, but to her mind, Kaori probably knew better than those other women. After all, Kaori really was a woman of standing, higher standing than any woman in Kusa could claim.

The smiles and laughter faded out of Kaori as she spoke of their clan. She told her child the tales, and Karin's dreams were haunted by intricate seals, hot, humid summer days, and the sparkling blue sea she had never seen. Her dreams were haunted with the lost splendor of the Uzumaki clan.

(Her nightmares were haunted with smoke and invaders roaming the streets, and the idea that they would come for her the way they had come for Uzushio. But she never told her mother any of that. Karin was always afraid that Kaori would have stopped her stories if she had ever known.)

-0-0-0-

In the tiny house Karin shared with her mother, she was a daughter of the Uzumaki clan, a woman of standing, but in the village they lived in, she was nobody.

"_Listen to me, Karin. No one must ever discover that you are a child of the Uzumaki clan. They will hurt you or take advantage of you. It is not safe for us to be who we are and possess the abilities we do, not in this world. No child of our long-lived clan is safe."_

What a bitter truth that was, and Karin choked on it, protested to her mother that there was no way she was just going to hide who she was. What about their family, what about the grandparents she had lost before she could even know them? What about their kin, what about the city that had sat on the shore and sparkled like a jewel in the morning sun? What about their seals? What about their old tales and traditions?

Kaori would not budge. She took hold of her daughter's hands and bid Karin to look at her directly. _"I mean it, Karin. Anyone who knows your heritage will only ever use that knowledge to hurt you. Tell me that you will never tell anyone who you are._

"_They will put you in chains."_

Eventually, Karin had to agree.

In the village, she was no one, nothing. Just the fatherless daughter of a no-name kunoichi who had come to the country as a penniless refugee. The other kids made fun of her strange red eyes, and Karin learned early on not to let slip her preternatural 'hunches' about people, that saying that she could automatically tell if someone was lying or could tell just by being around someone if they were a good or bad person didn't get her anywhere. Try as she might to say that someone was 'warm' or 'cold', they either said she was lying, or laughed in her face and called her crazy instead—Karin was left to wonder why she alone could feel these things, the only sighted person in this entire village.

'Freak' was another name that got slapped on her as well. Karin discovered her ability to heal others by having them bite her quite by accident. As much as she had been warned not to mess with animals she didn't know, when Karin found an injured dog on the side of the road one day, she couldn't help but try to pet it. The dog, a little thing, probably no more than a puppy, in turn bit her hand when she brought it too close to the dog's head. It was a strange sensation that flowed down her arm, draining as though more than blood was dripping out of her wound. A greenish light enveloped to area around the dog's head and her hand and, miraculously, the dog's twisted leg and bloody flank mended itself.

Unfortunately, there had been witnesses to this incident, and if anything could be said of the kids in Karin's village, it was that they were a bunch of tattletales.

To them, she was no one and nothing. They didn't notice that Karin always held her head up high, or it just made them deride her further. But they didn't, _couldn't_ have the same dreams as her. None of them had dreams like hers. They knew nothing beyond their small lives in this little village. They never went to their beds dreams of sealwork and families they'd never know.

-0-0-0-

Kaori warned Karin to never reveal the name of her clan, and though it had taken some arm-twisting to get Karin to agree to it, once Karin made a promise, she was hardly going to break it. She was a woman of standing, after all, and a woman of standing kept her word, no matter what. A daughter of the Uzumaki clan always kept her promises.

It had been easier when she had her mother.

When Karin still had her mother, she had the stories that Kaori had told. She had assurances that, one day, she too would learn the fuinjutsu of the Uzumaki clan. She had the presence of someone who shared her blood and dreams and knew the tales as well as she did, better, even, and kept them in her heart.

But Mama died the way every shinobi had to, and Karin moved her belongings into the dormitories over the ramshackle Academy. Practically speaking, she knew she should have been grateful to still have a roof over her head and food in her stomach. Practically speaking. But pragmatism meant nothing in the face of the indignity of having to share an open room with so many other children, stripped of anything resembling privacy. Pragmatism meant nothing in the face of sleeping on a thin cot in a drafty building, so rarely able to sleep through the sounds of snoring in every direction, the wind battering on the walls, the constant assault of 'warm,' 'hot,' 'cold,' 'light' and 'dark' that came from being around so many people at once. Before, Karin had thought the house she shared with her mother pitifully small, but she would have given much to be able to return to that place filled with love again.

She lied awake in the dark, not quite in the path of the moonbeams that filtered in through the nearest window. Karin held Kaori's string of pearls under the slightly threadbare blanket, running her finger over the pearls one by one. Karin stared up at the ceiling, frowning.

To those who slept all around her, she was no one, nothing. She was just another no-name orphan who was living off charity, and wouldn't stop being a useless lump and a burden until she became a genin, never mind if she even _wanted_ to become a kunoichi or not. She was tethered to the Academy, beholden to those who fed and clothed her, and there was only one way they would ever accept repayment. There was nothing about her worth noting, unless you counted her freaky ability to heal others by having them bite her, and the less said of that, the better. Karin did her best not to remind anyone that she could do that.

_This isn't what's meant for me_.

The wind beat on the terracotta-shingle roof, and Karin bit back a scream.

_I'm not meant for this._

Sometimes, Karin imagined that some long-lost relative would find her and take her away from all this. Her mother swore (in a tone of voice it would take Karin years to recognize as 'desperate') that there were other survivors of the Uzumaki clan alive in the world. Whenever Karin saw a red-headed person in the street, she studied them intently, watching for signs of proficiency with fuinjutsu. She studied their clothes for the spiral, their faces for any resemblance to herself or her mother, however minute. She looked at them, trying to discern any similarities in their 'aura.'

She never found any.

-0-0-0-

(Karin still had the tales and stories, but if she wanted to hear them again, she would have to be met with silence and empty space, for there was no one else to share them with.

After a while, she decided that reciting them in her head was better.)

-0-0-0-

No one believed her when Karin said that there were people coming. A great mass of men and women were nearing the village, could no one else tell? The Academy teachers hushed her and threatened to give her detention if she kept 'lying.' When the lights in the dormitories were turned out and the children were told to go to sleep, Karin took matters into her own hands.

Her feet stung. Karin tore another patch of skin open on a rock and hissed, angry with herself. Like an idiot she had snuck out of the dormitories wearing nothing but her nightgown. _What was I thinking? _Now she was cold all over except her feet, which burned and stung after being torn open on shale and unforgiving undergrowth. The only thing she'd thought to take with her was Mama's string of pearls, which clinked together dully with each move she made.

Down in the village, someone started to scream.

Karin spun on her heels, her heart pounding. In the valley sat the village. There were a lot more lights on than usual for this time of night…

No.

Her gaze drifted upwards, catching sight of the thin wisps of smoke against the moon.

That was fire.

Karin watched, transfixed, as the village began to burn. The people she had sensed gathered around the borders like wolves circling a kill, and inside… Inside, the auras of the people of her village were going out like guttering candles, one by one.

The smell of smoke was starting to permeate the air around her; her eyes stung. Karin crawled under an overgrown rose bush whose last flowers laid in petals on the ground, and found herself shaking uncontrollably. The thorns pulled on her hair and her nightgown, dug little nicks into her flesh, but she barely noticed. Kaori's pearls rattled in her small hands, ice-cold to the touch.

_This isn't happening. This isn't happening. What can I do to make all this a dream?_

Try as she might, Karin couldn't block the roar the fire rose to out of her ears. The guttering auras of the villagers went out as the fire rose higher, going out in one great gasp as the moon crawled to ascendancy in the sky. Eventually, those who had burned it dispersed, returning to wherever it was they had slunk out from. Karin fell into a dazed half-sleep, her head resting against the cold earth, until the watery gray light of morning brought her back to full wakefulness.

_What am I going to do now?_

She was lying awake on the ground under the rose bush, stiff and sore, but unable to find any capacity to care about it. Karin stared listlessly up at the pale gray sky, blinking occasionally against the glare. The cold pierced her bones and she… She just didn't care.

_It happened so easily. They just came and burned it. Is that what happens to people who don't have power? Now everybody's…_

She should have felt something. She knew she should have felt _something_. Her village was gone. Everyone she had known, whether she liked them, hated them or was simply indifferent to them, was gone. Her mother's grave had been burned. But she stared up at the gray sky, and just felt nothing. She ran over faces in her head, and felt nothing. It all felt unreal. It all felt like a particularly vivid nightmare, and she would wake up soon to the sound of the bell calling the students down to breakfast.

And yet, she couldn't sense any of them around her.

_What am I going to do now?_

Karin had never been to another town in her life; this might have been the furthest outside of the village she had ever been, period. She supposed she should make for Kusagakure, but she didn't even have any idea where Kusagakure was or how long she'd have to walk to get there. And if by chance she did get to Kusagakure, what then? Her life there would be no different from the one she had led here. Meaningless…

Her stomach growled. Karin blinked, dully surprised at herself. She didn't think she could still feel hungry after everything.

She lied there for who knew how long. The pit of hunger grew in her stomach, but Karin couldn't find the impetus to get up and look for food. Numbness seeped into her bones. She ran her thumb over each of the pearls on the string absently.

Then, she felt someone approaching.

She stiffened anxiously, propping herself up on her elbows. There was a man somewhere nearby—and don't ask Karin how she knew it was a man. He didn't feel like anyone Karin had known in the village; he didn't feel like anyone Karin had ever known. She frowned. There was something… _odd _about him. Karin was sure it was just one man, and yet it felt as though there were many people, all stacked one on top of the other. He felt warm and cold at the same time; it was impossible to say what kind of person he was.

But Karin was also sure that he wasn't one of the people who had burned her village down. Almost of its own accord, her body began to move—she crawled out from under the bush, this time feeling it much more acutely as the thorns pulled at her. As she was getting to her feet, Karin stuffed Kaori's pearls into her nightgown pocket.

There, standing before her, was the man.

He was very strange-looking, with long black hair, a bone-white face and slanted yellow eyes; actually, his eyes were rather akin to those of a snake. He looked more like how a fairytale would describe a spirit as looking than how a human man was supposed to appear. His piercing gaze met hers, and Karin resisted the urge to squirm, resisted the urge to look away—she did _not _stare at her feet when talking to people like some of the girls she…

Like some of the girls she had known.

The man smiled, an oddly reassuring smile to come from a mouth full of such sharp teeth as his. "What happened to the village in the valley, child?"

"Erm… My name's Karin… People came and burned my village."

The man's golden eyes widened, but all the same, he didn't seem particularly distressed. "Oh? And tell me, Karin, how was it that you alone survived this catastrophe?"

Karin hesitated, before telling him, "Well… I could feel them coming. I tried to warn everyone else, but they wouldn't listen to me."

She didn't really expect him to believe her. After all, it wasn't like anyone ever believed her when she said that she could 'sense' or 'feel' things. Karin steeled herself for the moment when he would accuse her of lying; after all, that was what people _normally_ did when she said that she could 'feel' things. Even her mother had expressed skepticism, even if the word 'lying' never left her mouth.

But instead, he dropped to his knees in front of her. "Indeed; fools will surely show themselves to be fools in times of peril. But even fools can produce a clever child." He pulled a small paper packet out of his pocket and undid the string binding it. Inside were three small kaszanka. He pressed the packet into her hand. "Here, Karin, have this." He smiled again, a less unsettling smile for that it didn't show any teeth. "You must be hungry."

The sharp iron taste of the sausages, mixed with pepper and buckwheat and marjoram, was thick and harsh to her empty stomach, but Karin devoured the kaszanka so quickly that she barely cared at all about the way her stomach prickled and burned as she ate. Her eyes watered, but she ignored it.

"Come with me, child. There is more for you in this world than can be found as a homeless urchin."

-0-0-0-

In that vast system of bases and hideouts eventually to be known as Otogakure, Orochimaru's word was law. Not once did she ever hear him raise his voice, but Karin knew that from the moment she set foot in his world. If Orochimaru told you to do something, you did it; if he said 'jump', you jumped. That was just how it was. The snake ruled over the dark, damp places, and the field mice did as they were told if they knew what was good for them.

Over the coming years, Karin would meet many who had fallen under Orochimaru's sway, or otherwise under his dominion. There were those who resented every moment they spent in the dark, there would always be those people. And yet, there were those who thrived in the dark, those who would have withered away anywhere else. Orochimaru had given _them_ the only direction, the only purpose they had ever known. Those cast aside by the world gathered under his banner, and could never have felt loyalty to anyone but him.

Karin herself would never try to deny that Orochimaru had given her a great deal. Under him, she learned that being able to 'sense' things didn't make her a liar, and neither insane. He gave her the assurance of her own sanity—something that she was ashamed to admit she'd not always been sure of. He taught her to hone her extraordinary raw talent as a sensor, taught her basic ninjutsu, taijutsu and genjutsu. From Kabuto and other medics in the labyrinthine bases Karin also learned the basics of medical ninjutsu, though circumstances would conspire to ensure that she would rarely have to utilize what she'd learned.

Orochimaru had given Karin a great deal.

But in Otogakure, nothing was ever given freely.

She felt pride to be able to save other's lives. Men and women were brought to Karin injured or even dying, and just by having them bite her, she could bring them back from death's door all by herself. She could watch color return to their gray faces when no one else could possibly have saved them, and for a moment, Karin thought herself the most powerful kunoichi under Orochimaru's command.

And yet…

Pint after pint after pint of blood they took from her, so much that Karin's vision would blur and she was sure she would die. The room spun and darkened, but she couldn't get up from the chair they sat her down in, strapped down and so weak that her legs felt like jelly.

It wasn't her choice. She watched as Kabuto injected the prisoners and watched as they inevitably sickened and died from it, even if the blood types matched up. Karin watched in horror as they burned up in fever and wondered what it could be about her _own blood_ that affected others so badly. What could be in her body that was so toxic to others, when in turn her body could be used to heal others?

Used.

Used.

Used.

That was what it always came down to. It wasn't her choice. She could marvel at how she could heal others and recoil from how she could kill them in such horrifying ways, but it was never her choice.

(_You're too close!_)

There were scars on her arms.

(_That hurts!_)

There were scars on her neck.

(_No, I won't! I won't do that! You can't make me! You can't…_)

There were scars on her chest.

(_This isn't all of it. This isn't my story.)_

She examined them when she was alone at night. The prisoners had been sent back to their cells and everyone else to their rooms, but it was all the same, really, just cells of a different type and prisoners of a different sort. Karin pulled off her shirt and stared at herself in the mirror, running her thumb over the mottled brown crescent-shaped scars.

Every one marked a life she had saved or an injury she had healed. Every one marked a minute, hour, day or week shaved off her lifespan, depending on how severe the patient's injuries had been. Every one marked… They all marked…

(_She didn't want their hands on her, she didn't didn't didn't… She was sick of this, sick of the draining feeling, sick of the pain, sick of being stared at sickofbeingtouchedandgropedbypeopleshedidn'tknowmenandwomentwiceheragethosewholookedawayandthosewhostaredtoomuchfelttoomuchincriminatingthingsliedwhenaskediftheylikeditfeltincriminatingthings…_

_But you learn to deal. One way or another.)_

Her gaze was always frank and troubled in the faintly blurred reflection the warped glass of the mirror presented. Karin pulled her shirt back over her head and counted herself glad that she could cover all this up with clothing.

Staring up at the ceiling, she inevitably thought: _I wouldn't have chosen to be used this way_.

-0-0-0-

(An older girl stole Kaori's pearls during Karin's first week in the hideout. She went complaining to the adults and no one cared; she tried to take the pearls back and was punched in the face for her troubles, to the tune of the other kids laughing and clapping.

Rule one of Otogakure: Everyone for themselves.

Rule two of Otogakure: Look after yourself, because no one else will do it for you.

Rule three of Otogakure: Watch your back.

Karin learned other things as well, chief among them to never let others see that she was afraid, or saddened by anything at all. This wasn't a soft place for such things, and soft people didn't survive in Orochimaru's domains. Everyone was a prisoner, even those who freely walked the halls. Everyone wore chains down here, even the wardens; the trick was learning to see the chains on yourself, learning how much give they had and how far you could walk before someone would yank on them and remind you of what you were.

To survive, some developed the spine of steel, and others of brittle stone. Karin would never know which it had been with her, but she did know this. One day, she found a single pearl sitting in a forgotten, dusty corner in the hallway, and she kicked it away without feeling so much as a prickling at the corners of her eyes.)

-0-0-0-

Long before Orochimaru came to this land, long before Ta no Kuni was ever known as Oto no Kuni, this land was a haven for bandits, thieves, exiles, missing nin and other wanderers. There were people here from every corner of the Elemental Nations and beyond. No one was quite sure what it was about this patch of land in the north of the lands where the Sage's people held sway. The shinobi exiled from Hi no Kuni centuries ago had gone west to establish Tetsu no Kuni, but pretty much everyone else had gone north, and stayed there.

Orochimaru liked to scatter these divergent peoples throughout his lands. One of his favorite tactics for keeping order in his prisons was to ensure that there was never too-large a group of people from the same country held in one prison. It had a lot to do with language. Those from the Elemental Nations would have had only Common to use when speaking to one another, and had only a few, if any at all, to speak their nation's mother tongue with. Those from outside the shinobi lands might not have been able to communicate at all. And then there were the differing ideals, the old grudges, the xenophobia… People like this were less likely to find enough common ground to organize and revolt, though it still happened from time to time.

Most of the people in Otogakure who hailed from beyond the shinobi lands were being held against their will—most, but not all. There were a few who wandered the halls freely, vassals of Orochimaru who had more freedom than the ones kept in cells and fed rice gruel three times a day. Among those, there were even a few who spoke Common.

Ganbaatar held court in the mess hall to the children who gathered about him to hear his tales. He was a gray-bearded man in his late fifties, from the land of the nomadic horsemen to the west of Tsuchi no Kuni—an alright sort, in that he didn't hit or speak harshly to Karin and that he'd never been one of the ones brought to her with injuries, so she could at least look at him without her feeling her skin crawl under her shirt. His stories were the sort Karin loved the most, the ones she could listen to and forget the fairly bland taste of plain, day-old idli in her mouth.

Distant lands.

People Karin had never seen.

By the time Ganbaatar's tone turned to wistfulness Karin was appalled to find that her stomach was twisting in sympathy for him.

She knew it was useless to dream of the Uzumaki clan in places like this. They all wore chains down here, and even if you could walk the halls freely, the chain pulled taut at the door to the outside world. But even so, down in dark places like this, Karin found herself repeating the patterns of earlier childhood. Find a red-haired person. Look at their faces for similarities to her own. Look at their chakra signatures for the same. Watch for signs of any proficiency with fuinjutsu.

Sometimes, Karin would steal into the archives and search through the books and scrolls for any information on the Uzumaki clan and their ruined lands. She found bits and pieces on longevity and talent with fuinjutsu, found rumors of unusual abilities (never anything like 'healing others by having them bite you', though, and Karin didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved by that), and came away dissatisfied, as she never learned anything she hadn't already known.

-0-0-0-

The shinobi system of Oto no Kuni, though perhaps 'unorthodox', did mirror that of the five great nations and their satellites to some extent. There wasn't the officially enforced ranking system of genin, chunin, Tokubetsu Jonin and jonin; it would probably be better to say that shinobi were ranked depending on how important they were to Orochimaru. And yet, there was still a missions system in Oto no Kuni. Shinobi were still sent out on missions, either by Orochimaru, or on commission from clients; Karin herself had been on a few, though rarely with a team.

Being sent undercover to the Chunin Exams in Konohagakure was easily most important mission Karin had ever been assigned, even if it was only an intelligence-gathering mission. Karin didn't really understand why she and the two other kids she'd been sent with were disguised as Kusa no Kuni genin—Oto no Kuni had actually been _invited _to attend, and there was another 'genin cell' here that wasn't even pretending to be from anywhere but Oto. But Karin wouldn't question it. It wasn't any use questioning Orochimaru's orders—even if you weren't punished for it, it wasn't like Orochimaru was actually going to give you an explanation; it wasn't like he had any obligation to do so (Even if it did irritate Karin more than a little bit to be told to do something without any proper explanation).

This… This was dangerous.

What Karin had heard about Konoha had painted a picture of a soft, cushy village, and she had accordingly expected a soft, cushy assignment. Chunin Exams? Ha! Oto might not have that kind of ranking system, but Karin was _sure _she was more than capable of doing anything a chunin could.

Okay, maybe Karin hadn't factored the Forest of Death into her equations when she thought that.

The last week had been… Well, she'd had much worse weeks in Oto no Kuni, but this experience was its own special brand of harrowing. Karin and the two boys who had been assigned to gather intel with her had spent the last week unable to do a whole lot more than try their hardest not to get killed, let alone pick up a heaven scroll. They'd managed to avoid confrontation with the other genin cells, but only because Karin could sense them coming. As for the ridiculous animals in the forest, they were more difficult for Karin to pick out—this whole place was teeming with wildlife, all of it unnatural in some way, and Karin was having trouble differentiating between them and determining how far or close they were from the three of them.

And now, she had been separated from her teammates, and was being chased by a bear.

A gigantic, fucking _bear_.

Somehow, out of all of the ways Karin had imagined dying, being mauled by a bear wasn't one of them.

Especially not without her glasses on.

Then, suddenly, she sensed a new chakra signature, a human one. Someone Karin didn't know subdued the bear with almost terrifying ease, and just like that, this latest episode was over. But far from moving to sardonicism as she usually did when recovering from fear, Karin blinked up at the blurry figure standing on top of the bear's head.

Who was it who had gone so far out of his way to help her, when all she was to him was more competition? Certainly not one of her teammates; his chakra didn't feel anything like theirs.

"So you've got an earth scroll too, huh?"

_His chakra's so warm…_

Karin plucked her glasses up from the grass and slid them back up over the bridge of her nose. The boy standing on the bear's head was around her age, black-haired and wearing a Konoha hitai-ate. He smiled down at her. That smile…

"See ya."

And then, just like that, he ran off.

"Umm… Thank you," Karin said to the empty air, nearly stammering in spite of herself.

For the rest of the day, that smile was at the forefront of her mind, so powerful an image that she was barely bothered by the fact that her team ultimately failed to obtain both scrolls and was thus disqualified from moving on in the Chunin Exams. For the rest of her life, Karin was sure she would remember it vividly. It had been years since someone had last smiled so kindly at her.

-0-0-0-

Against all hope, Karin saw the boy again, and in the last place she expected to see him.

She saw him walking behind Orochimaru in his new body and behind Kabuto as well, thin and small next to them, but gathering shadows all his own behind him. A new arrival to Oto no Kuni he was, and at first sight, Karin knew who he must be. The hideout had been abuzz about Orochimaru's condition—Karin herself had heard the screams, both Orochimaru's and those of the hapless shinobi who went to aid him only to be killed—and she knew who his chosen host was. Uchiha Sasuke. That must be his name.

_The boy who saved me at the Chunin Exams… This is the one Orochimaru-sama has chosen as his next host?_

Karin's stomach clenched at the thought.

She was standing in a shadowed doorway, all but eavesdropping—she hadn't meant to be noticed. But his eyes caught hers. They stared at each other for a long moment, and when Sasuke's eyes widened, Karin realized that he must have remembered her too.

Was she supposed to be happy about that?

-0-0-0-

Sasuke's tale was one that was painfully familiar to Karin.

No matter where you were in the shinobi nations, it was impossible not to have some knowledge of the Uchiha clan, even if that knowledge was only in passing. One of the clans claiming descent from the Sage of Six Paths, distant kin to Karin herself, were hardly going to be lacking in notoriety. They had been a part of shinobi history since the beginning of history, moved amongst the tapestry of history like giants leaving footprints in the sand.

As such, Karin knew about the massacre of the Uchiha clan in Konohagakure, knew that the only two survivors were the murderer of the clan and the child he had spared. She'd not thought that she would ever meet that child.

"You need to eat this."

Karin's first proper impression of Uchiha Sasuke was that he was a very angry person. Not the shouty kind of angry that Karin would admit that she could quite easily slip into. No, Sasuke wasn't the kind of person to go around constantly verbalizing his anger and making it quite clear to one and all that he was in a snit (Though there were times when it came across pretty clearly regardless). He was the sort to quietly sit in the corner and fume all day, probably plotting revenge on the people who'd wronged him. He was never at ease, never calm behind that stoic mask of a face. On some level, Karin was glad of that—no one with an ounce of sense let their guard down in Otogakure—but the sheer lack of stillness she sensed about him, the sheer amount of turmoil beneath that neutral expression, was far beyond what Karin was accustomed to in Oto nin.

Karin's second impression of Uchiha Sasuke was that he could be a huge idiot sometimes.

Sasuke eyeballed the bowl of stew she held out to him with the special brand of silent recalcitrance that could only come from a teenage boy. "I'm not hungry," he said shortly. His gaze went from the bowl of stew to shooting past each of her shoulders in turn, probably wondering whether he could slip past her into the hallway or some such shit like that. After all, holding two bowls of stew as she was, it wasn't like she'd easily be able to stop him.

"It's orders," Karin snapped. "The Sharingan and the Cursed Seal both speed up your metabolism and drain your chakra. All I've gotta do is take one look at you to see you're running on empty half the time, and I'm not the only one who's noticed; Orochimaru-sama has as well. You need to start eating more than you have been."

Sasuke stiffened at the mention of Orochimaru, and Karin thought that had done the trick, but no; he did indeed slip out past her into the hall.

"Sasuke!"

"I'll eat when I get hungry, Karin. For now, I need to go train."

Karin snarled in the back of her throat and set the bowls down on the table. "Hold it!" she barked. Karin cut Sasuke off in the hallway and jabbed him in the chest with a finger, glaring at him fiercely. "Don't disrespect me! I am a woman; you are a man. _I outrank you._ When I tell you to do something, you do it. Got that?"

Sasuke's mouth opened and shut, but no words came out; he stared down at her incredulously. Karin took advantage of his shock and steered him back into his room. She took the bowls of stew, moved them to in front of the chairs, and motioned for Sasuke to sit down. Once he did so, Karin sat down in the chair opposite him.

He was angry, and oftentimes let his anger rule him. Letting anger rule you makes you do stupid things; Karin knew that well enough, and it was why, no matter how angry she got, she always kept a certain part of her mind cool so that it could cool the rest of her mind as well. Stupid things like choosing training over food.

Sasuke peered down at the stew, spoon in hand. "What… type of stew is this?" he asked dubiously.

"It's dimlama," Karin replied between mouthfuls. When she spotted Sasuke's subtly uncomprehending look, she went on, "It's got mutton in it, and onions and potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes and eggplant, carrots and turnips. The cooks don't usually make it at this time of year, but it's been warm, so there's still enough fresh vegetables to make it."

"Oh." Sasuke took an experimental bite of the stew, going for a piece of mutton instead of any of the vegetables. He stared down at the stew, and then at her. "You're… going to stay here, aren't you," he said flatly. Not a question, really.

Karin nodded, trying her best to seem completely dispassionate, when in reality she was torn between exasperation with Sasuke's stubbornness and a secret thrill at being able to eat a meal with him. "Yes, I am. My mother always said that you should never eat meals alone; food has no taste to it unless you're eating it with someone else." Which was why she had always eaten in the mess hall, even in the early days when she had still been dizzied and faintly nauseated by the pressing masses of chakra on her awareness.

Sasuke said nothing to this, but even in the gloom Karin couldn't miss how his brow furrowed. Mentally, she kicked herself, but couldn't quite keep from asking, "It's been a while for you, hasn't it?"

Sasuke paused for a long moment, soup spoon halfway to his mouth, before gulping down another mouthful of stew. That pause was all the answer Karin needed, and more.

_So you sat in that big house and ate all by yourself, every empty space at the table reminding you of the family you had lost._

His anger was familiar to her, familiar as her own scarred skin. The pain he tried to hide and deny, betrayed only by shivers in chakra, that was as familiar as her own beating heart. There were times when Karin wished she could unstick her mouth and forget her promise to her mother so that she could tell him so, but loyalty to the dead kept her lips sealed.

Sasuke wished to avenge himself and his dead kin. He carried the honor and memory of the Uchiha clan by himself. Karin wondered if he had ever stumbled and fallen under that burden. She wondered if he ever felt as though he had the weight of the world resting square on his shoulders. She wondered if he ever woke up at night in a cold sweat because the knowledge of his own isolation had pressed even into his dreams. She wondered if he ever felt like her.

Karin knew what the anger felt like. She had raged against her own isolation, raged against her clan's destruction. But she didn't have Sharingan eyes; she just wore chains that bound her to this place like a lab rat. She didn't have the Sage's eyes, and she couldn't put a name to her tormentor. Her tormentor was the nameless mass of the world, who refused to acknowledge that the Uzumaki clan had even existed. One girl bound in chains could not avenge herself on the whole world. She could only try to live with her lot.

"You fool," she said softly, a treacherous lump forming in the back of her throat. Sasuke looked up from the dimlama, surprised. "How are you supposed to get stronger if you don't eat enough to give your body strength?"

_How are you supposed to get stronger if you just let Orochimaru take your body?_

_If you just let him use you like a pawn?_

He never refused food from her again, and put up no protest when Karin ate with him, day after day until she was sent to take custody of the southern hideout. Sometimes they spoke to each other, but for the most part, they just sat in silence.

Over those meals, Karin came to a third conclusion about Uchiha Sasuke.

Sasuke didn't look anything like the boy who had smiled at her in the Forest of Death. Karin wasn't sure where that smile had even come from, knowing what she did now; she could not imagine how someone burdened as he was could smile like that. But she was sure she wouldn't see it again until the day Uchiha Itachi lied cold and dead on the ground. There would be no peace for him until his brother was dead.

So she hoped that Sasuke would get the chance.

-0-0-0-

Sasuke did manage to prove to her that he was nobody's pawn.

-0-0-0-

In Taka…

Well, it was hard to say what Karin had found in Taka.

Karin had never expected to come to care for Suigetsu or Juugo, or even like them at all. Orochimaru was all they had in common—they were the tools and lab rats of Orochimaru, and that was the only thing that bound them. Suigetsu was annoying and Juugo dangerous, and it wasn't like any of that had changed after Sasuke had defeated Orochimaru and assembled Taka, then known as Hebi, to help him track down and kill his older brother.

But something certainly had changed, at some point. Karin still found Suigetsu's entire existence deeply annoying, and even if Juugo was consistently calmer under Sasuke's influence, he was still dangerous. Karin could hardly be accused of having no sense of self-preservation; these weren't the people you would have expected her to surround herself with.

And yet, somewhere along the line of sleeping in cheap hotel rooms and roadside ditches, along the line of fighting alongside each other and risking their lives for each other, she had come to… value them. The two boys had become less sources of irritation and wariness and more comrades whom she trusted. Karin would never have let anyone else hurt them, and the idea of leaving them behind in Tetsu no Kuni was abhorrent to her.

In the beginning, they hadn't even been a team. They were just a group of people Sasuke had gathered together to help him kill his brother. Juugo would probably stay with Sasuke after Itachi was dead, the better to fulfill Kimimaro's will, but who knew what Suigetsu would have done, and even Karin hadn't known what she'd do once Itachi was dead. Even with Orochimaru dead, she still wore his chains. She wasn't sure she could keep on like this. She wasn't sure what to do with herself at all.

Somehow, they became a team.

And Sasuke was their leader.

From young teenager to older teenager, Sasuke had gone from very pretty to stupidly hot, and he was still a bit of an idiot. He still let his anger rule him; he still made stupid decisions that put himself at risk. He still wasn't the sort of person who would ever again smile the way he had in the Forest of Death, and he still needed people around him to keep him from careening over the edge into suicidal idiocy.

Karin, though she would never admit it out loud for multiple reasons, was glad for the opportunity to be around Sasuke, but realistically, she hadn't expected him to still want them around after he had killed Itachi. Their entire purpose in coming together was to kill Uchiha Itachi. Beyond that, what reason was there for Hebi? For Taka?

She would have expected him to cut them loose, and she would have had to find some other excuse to stick close by him. But, surprising even her, Sasuke still wanted them around after Itachi was gone. She wasn't even sure that it was because of his discoveries regarding the Uchiha clan, and that he still needed them as back-up. He just seemed to want them around, for no special reason. He didn't want to perform experiments on them, didn't want to pit them against each other in death matches to see who was stronger, didn't want to harvest their special abilities for his own use. He didn't want them to die for them, and proved that by protecting them in battle.

Whatever else she might have felt following Sasuke, Karin never felt as though she was being used. She never felt like he was the kind of person who would have sat back and watched them die when they ceased to be useful to him, the way Orochimaru would have done. He never yanked on her chains.

-0-0-0-

That might have made the pain worse when the Chidori went through her chest. It might have made him even more unrecognizable for the stranger that had taken up residence behind his skin.

-0-0-0-

And yet, in spite of all that, it was on account of Sasuke that Karin finally noticed that the chains that had bound her for so many years were gone. She'd thought that the slack had only gotten longer, but no, they were completely gone. The only chains were the ones she used to pin down the enemies who thought they could get between her and him.

(But maybe, Karin decided later, loving someone was like wearing chains too.)

-0-0-0-

A war that Karin barely cared about came to a violent close, and she watched as Sasuke walked off the battlefield with Juugo and Suigetsu in tow. She watched as they left, and made no attempt to follow them. She… needed to think, and Karin wasn't sure that she was going to get the necessary thinking done if she was within a fifty mile radius of Sasuke.

At the end of a war Karin didn't give a damn about, she was sure of a few things, at least.

One, she must have loved Sasuke. There was no way she could still want to be around him and protect him after he had stabbed her if she didn't love him. She had to love him if she could feel so much fear and distress on his behalf. _So this _isn't _hormones that would have just been solved by jumping his bones, being disappointed, and telling myself that, realistically speaking, a teenage boy as big a virgin as I am isn't gonna be the best lay in the world and I should move on to better things. Well that's fan-fucking-tastic._

Two, that girl who had saved her after Sasuke tried to kill her, Haruno Sakura, was actually a pretty cool girl—and if Karin thought you were a cool person, you _had _to be cool to live up to her standards. There was something about Sakura's approach to life, punching straight through obstacles, that appealed to Karin immensely. Plus she was a sympathetic ear to Karin's complaints about not just Sasuke, but everything else Karin could possibly feel the need to complain about. Sure, Karin suspected that this was only because Sakura was annoyed by many of the same things as her, but you had to take what you could get.

Three, apparently Karin had living family in one Uzumaki Naruto, savior of the world, supreme knucklehead and a distant cousin of some denomination. Maybe not so distant, seeing as how his mother could apparently also manifest chakra chains. (And it wasn't like she could keep her family heritage secret anymore, considering she had publicly used an ability a member of the Uzumaki clan had been renowned for.)

(Where had those chains even _come from_, anyways? It was like the knowledge to use them had just materialized in her head.)

Well, Sasuke, Juugo and Suigetsu were gone, leaving Karin with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Naruto, upon discovering who she was, begged and begged and begged Karin to come back to Konoha with the rest of the Leaf shinobi, even going so far as to press the Hokage to grant her amnesty—Tsunade was another distant relative, apparently. Karin didn't have anything better to do, and didn't really have anywhere else she could go—after abandoning her post in the southern hideout, it wasn't like she could just go back to Oto no Kuni (And she had no intention of going back to Orochimaru, considering he still wanted Sasuke's body).

And maybe Karin was a little curious about Naruto, too.

After all, it wasn't every day you met a member of the family you'd dreamed about since you were old enough to understand they were gone.

Karin shared an apartment in Konohagakure with Sakura and another girl named Ino. The three of them bonded over their shared irritation with the… ahem… less than spectacular conditions they were living in. Konoha was still recovering from Pain's attack and this apartment complex hadn't received quite the level of care in its construction that others had. A lack of indoor plumbing certainly could wear on someone, especially someone who wasn't used to living without that and similar amenities, but it was easier when you had someone who found it equally wearing to gripe to.

"_And there go the lights again," Sakura said with a sigh. The three girls had been sitting around the coffee table, filling out paperwork taken home from their respective workplaces, when the electrical lights overhead flickered, quavered for a moment, and then went out entirely. Which, considering it was nine o'clock at night, left them bathed in complete darkness._

"_Maybe they'll come back on again," Ino replied hopefully. Ino was an optimist like that, though to be honest, Karin couldn't remember the last time Ino's optimism had actually been rewarded. "Maybe they won't be out for too long this time."_

"_Oh, come on, Ino, when's that ever happened?" Sakura argued. She slapped her pen down on the table and rubbed her forehead. "We're not gonna have power again until morning."_

"_Well you never know, and you don't have to take that tone with me; I'm just trying to be—"_

"_Do we have candles?" Karin asked, cutting Ino off. When she was met with perplexed (and in Ino's case, more than a little offended) looks, she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She'd _really _wanted to get her paperwork done before going to bed. "None of the hideouts in Oto were ever fully equipped with electricity. The power for it's gotta come from somewhere, and too much would've been too noticeable, so only the laboratories had power. Everywhere else in the hideouts used candles and torches and lanterns for lighting; after a while, you got used to going to the quartermaster's office to stock up."_

_Sakura and Ino cast a glance at each other, so thoroughly in-sync that Karin had to feel a twinge of envy. "We can go get candles," Sakura pointed out._

"_We can," Ino agreed. "The shops should still be open."_

_The two of them hopped up from the ground, pausing only at the genkan to pull their shoes back on. Karin watched them, a strange feeling grounding in her stomach, until Ino turned around and raised an eyebrow at her. "You coming or what? Keep dawdling and we'll just buy orange candles that'll clash with your hair."_

"_Ah… Like hell you will!"_

Karin had never had girls her own age to be friends with before. She still wasn't sure how she felt about it.

Five days a week, Karin worked at the hospital; Tsunade required her to work for as long as she lived in Konohagakure. Personally, this didn't bother Karin. She'd always been required to pull her weight in Oto, the same as everyone else, and Karin would have died of boredom if she had been barred from finding something to keep her hands full.

She didn't really have an official 'job' at the hospital, even if she was pulling an entry-level salary for her work. Sometimes Karin worked at the receptionist's desk (And ignored the stares her arms, mostly bared by the receptionist's uniform, got). Sometimes she did check-ups. Sometimes she looked over paperwork. Sometimes she healed minor injuries. Sometimes Naruto came in while she was on-duty and bugged her, trying to get her to play hooky so she'd go train or eat ramen with him. It wasn't too different from the life Karin had led in Oto no Kuni before taking custody of the southern hideout. She really didn't know who these Konoha nin were trying to fool when they acted like they were so different from everyone else.

Never was Karin allowed to work with patients directly without some kind of supervision. If it wasn't Sakura hanging around nearby, it was Tsunade's attendant Shizune. They never came out and said it directly, but Karin wasn't the kind of idiot who couldn't see what was going on here. The idea that she, a medical ninja, wasn't trusted with the lives of her patients set her teeth on edge (Never mind the fact that medical ethics as a concept barely existed in Oto no Kuni; Karin _did _have standards). The idea that they didn't just come out and say so… Well, that was just galling. Especially when Karin could feel her 'supervisors'' chakra spike every time she saw to a patient.

This really wasn't home. This wasn't a place where she could or should get comfortable (_Even if her only family was here_). This wasn't home, but then, no place since her mother's house had been. No use crying over something she'd barely had to start with.

(Though Karin certainly could get mad, and sometimes Naruto found that her punches were a bit harder than usual when they trained together.)

-0-0-0-

"I still don't understand why you don't just have people bite me," Karin grumbled.

On Saturdays, Shizune gave Karin tutoring in medical ninjutsu sometimes. To this end, they went over to the former's home, a neat, smallish house close to the Hokage Mountain. The two of them sat in Shizune's kitchen while Karin practiced Mystical Palm on a fish and tried not to scream from sheer boredom. Any attempts to protest that she already knew this stuff fell on deaf ears.

"You know why, Karin-san," Shizune replied in a slightly harried voice. "Tsunade-sama is worried about the affect your abilities have on you when used, and frankly, so am I. Now come on, I know you can do better than this; you chakra control was much better last weekend."

Shizune was not the sort of woman Karin would have ever expected to come to respect. On first glance she seemed entirely too meek and mild for Karin's tastes; the older woman's high-energy, excitable nature, which should have been a plus, was combined with far too much 'niceness.' There just didn't seem to be much going on with Shizune under that exterior.

But Karin didn't deal in exteriors, and she wouldn't have lived to seventeen if she had gone her life only ever judging people. She didn't have to dig too deep to pick up on the steely edge behind Shizune's smiles, whether it was in dealing with recalcitrant patients or in dealing with Tsunade on the occasions when the Hokage didn't want to do her paperwork. Karin kind of had to kick herself for not picking up on it earlier.

"Oh?" Karin retorted, glaring at Shizune out of the corner of her eye. "Is that why you and the Hokage keep running those tests on me, then?"

Here was another way in which life in Konoha was shaping up to not be all that different from life in Oto no Kuni. Ever since Karin's ability to heal people by having them bite her had come to light (and to be honest, Karin was kind of surprised that her interrogators had never asked her where all her _bite-shaped scars_ had come from, but then, they'd been way too soft from the start), Tsunade had insisted on running tests after tests… after tests.

So Karin had skin and blood samples taken. She had to answer questionnaire after questionnaire about the effects of the heal-biting from her perspective—what it physically felt like to her, what she as a sensor perceived happening, if she had ever suffered bacterial infections after having someone bite her, and on and on and on. Tsunade was especially adamant that Karin report any negative effects she had experienced from heal-biting in the past. On three occasions, Karin was called upon to heal a person with wounds of varying seriousness while a Hyuuga trained in medical ninjutsu watched carefully with Byakugan to see what was going on with Karin's chakra flow while the patient was being healed.

This was giving Karin vivid flashbacks to the 'tests' that had been run on her in Otogakure. The main difference was that she wasn't being restrained during any of these tests, and if not for the fact that she could tell they were being truthful when Tsunade and Shizune assured her that they had no intention of harming her, she would have left and never looked back—not just the hospital, but the entire fucking village. Though far less invasive, they were cutting far too close to memory for her comfort.

Shizune's brow furrowed. "They're not that bad, are they?"

"Let's put it this way. I've had enough experience being a lab rat to know I don't like it."

Shizune's mouth opened and closed for a few moments, like a fish stranded on dry land. "Well," she said quietly, not meeting Karin's gaze, "I don't think it will go on for much longer. Tsunade-sama just wants to find out how your abilities work; that's all."

The earnestness in her voice was real. The spikes in her chakra definitely signaled uncertainty. Shizune _wanted_ this to be the truth, but wasn't quite sure. Whether she wasn't sure about how much longer the tests would go on, or wasn't sure what Tsunade's motives were, Karin couldn't say. She wanted to say it was the former Shizune wasn't sure about. Tsunade wasn't nearly as jutsu-obsessed as Orochimaru; she probably wasn't the sort to take people's bodies apart just to decipher codes for unique abilities. _Probably_.

"Well," Karin muttered, as they got back to practicing with the fish, "I'll say this for the biting. I don't like it, but it gets the job done a lot faster and a lot more thoroughly than this."

Unlike Oto, Konoha wasn't all that inclined to taking short-cuts to the desired end. But Karin wondered how many people got hurt or died because of that. She wondered how many people ended up stuck waiting until they couldn't take it anymore.

Maybe that was how Sasuke had ended up the way he did.

-0-0-0-

Sometimes, Karin lied awake at night and couldn't sleep.

She shared a room with Sakura and Ino (the apartment was small; it couldn't be helped), and neither of them snored, but somehow it was just like the dormitories in Kusa all over again. She got stuck focusing on their chakra and couldn't sleep. From there, Karin got stuck on the chakra of everybody in the building, and it certainly wasn't like she was going to get any sleep after that. She wasn't sure she even wanted to sleep, anyways.

When they were together, she'd done this for Sasuke, and Juugo, and even Suigetsu. She'd wake up during the middle of the night and stretch out her senses to make sure they were all still around. Juugo because he needed supervision and who knew what would happen if he ran off? Suigetsu because he was an ass and if Karin didn't keep an eye on him he'd probably drink all of her water just to mess with her. Sasuke…

Sasuke because she liked being in contact with his chakra (_When it was warm, and what a relief it was when she felt his chakra warm again after the coldness it had reached in Tetsu no Kuni_). Sasuke because Karin felt like if she took her eyes off him for a second he'd wander off and fall off a cliff or something—he was pretty danger-prone, when she thought about it. Sasuke because he was lying awake too a lot of the times, and any way Karin could show him he wasn't alone, she would.

She hated this. Karin hated feeling like this. She hated lying awake at night with her stomach tangled into knots and the sensation of foreign chakra all around her became nearly more than she could bear. She hated the fact that she was lying awake worrying about them, here in this village.

Was this what loving someone felt like? It didn't feel any better than any of the ties that had bound Karin to Orochimaru. The emotions were different, but the pain was somehow far fiercer than the pain of being chained in Otogakure.

This wasn't home. This place that didn't even acknowledge the outside world and its difficulties, this wasn't home. This place was too perfect, and Karin hated it—she had found friends and family here, when she'd never expected to find either, but she couldn't stand the way the people here acted as though the atrocities that had taken place outside of Konoha's walls had never even happened. She couldn't stand the fact that they behaved as though many of the atrocities that had occurred _within _the walls had never happened.

Everybody here expected you to be all smiles and light. Even the nicest people, even the ones who had suffered too, even if they didn't say it, they expected you to endure your suffering with the utmost grace. No complaining, no resentment, even if the source of your suffering still stood strong and tall. Karin could bitch about the lack of plumbing in her apartment complex all she wanted, she could groan with Sakura and Ino when the lights went out, but the moment most people saw her scars, they got _uncomfortable_. They didn't want to look at her.

That had to be why Sasuke had left. These people couldn't handle nearly as much as they claimed they could.

-0-0-0-

Sometimes, Karin went to Ichiraku and ate ramen.

"Don't fill up on ramen, idiot! You've still got that thing with Sakura tonight!"

"Relax, Karin! This is just like the appetizer! It takes way more than this for me to fill up!"

Karin suspected that she was at her absolute happiest here when she was training with Naruto. She hadn't expected that. Naruto had just enough of Suigetsu in him that Karin had expected to find him completely and totally grating, and yet, she didn't. Maybe it was because of the warmth of his chakra, or his blood relation to her, or the fact that there was something just inexplicably endearing about knuckle-headed Naruto, but Karin found that of every person in Konohagakure, she liked Naruto the most.

And training was fine. Karin could improve her ninjutsu and taijutsu skills when she trained with Naruto—she'd made it clear to him that she'd received the bare minimum of training in those areas, and he made it clear that he couldn't teach her a thing about genjutsu, so they just focused on ninjutsu and taijutsu. It was remarkably soothing, being able to beat the tar out of someone who wouldn't hate you for it later since you were actually both taking something away from it.

"_I do most of my bonding through fighting_," Naruto had admitted with a rueful grin the first time they trained together. _"I guess it's just kind of how I am."_

Oddly enough, that was how he was. Oddly enough, it had worked for her, too. (_Maybe _that's _how I got to like Juugo and Suigetsu so much. Maybe it's written in the Uzumaki genome, or something._)

She'd never imagined she'd be training with a member of her own clan. The only thing that could even slightly spoil this was that Naruto didn't know any of the Uzumaki's fuinjutsu, had no real interest in learning, and Konoha didn't seem to have all that much information on the Uzumaki's fuinjutsu at all. She'd gone to the library, dug through as much of the Archives as her clearance levels would allow, and Karin just found bits and pieces of the Uzumaki's fuinjutsu, their history, their heritage.

_This is ridiculous. An Uzumaki helped _found _this town and as far as this town's concerned, the whole clan may as well not exist._

There were some let-downs about this situation, but it was still all that Karin had ever dreamed of. The kid sitting next to her shoveling miso ramen down his gob in-between chatting with Old Man Ichiraku, that kid with blond hair and blue eyes and a big grin semi-permanently affixed to his face, he was her family. This kid who didn't believe in going back on his word, this kid who didn't believe in giving up, he was her family. That was what she'd wanted since she was little. And yet…

"Hey, Naruto… I've got some questions for you."

"Wha…" Naruto swallowed his mouthful of ramen and looked at her, brow slightly furrowed. "What is it?"

"What do you feel about love?"

"Whoa." Naruto held his hands up and grinned nervously. "This talk got serious fast." Karin glared at him, and Naruto's smile faded. In its place arose a more serious expression. "Well, I guess it would be better if you said what you feel about love first."

Karin made a disaffected noise in the back of her throat and drank a draught of water from her cup. "What do I feel about love?" She laughed bitterly. "Oh, God, Naruto. I've had relationships—not romantic ones, mind you; I've had no luck there. They've all bound me in some way, no matter how much I loved and respected the other person or didn't. 'Love gives you strength, love gives you happiness.' I've heard all that, and, yeah, I get it." She stared down into her bowl of ramen, barely touched, and frowned pensively. "Hell, I've _lived _that. But nearly every tie I've ever had to someone has ended up around my neck and my wrists and my ankles… Like _chains_, Naruto; don't give me that look!" she snapped, when she noticed the quizzical look on Naruto's face.

Naruto shook himself and shrugged at her. "Maybe it's just 'cause you grew up around Orochimaru."

She made a dismissive noise in the back of her throat. "You think so?"

"Yeah, I think so. Come on, Karin. The guy is twisted, and Oto doesn't sound like a nice place to live full of nice people. That doesn't sound like a place where people have healthy relationships with each other."

"Well, you're right on the money there."

"Hey, I'm _always _right on the money. To me…" Naruto stirred his bowl of ramen with his chopsticks. "…I've seen love raise people up, Karin. I think that's what love does. It gives you hope and it makes you stronger. Yeah, it can hurt you, but so can everything else, and not having love hurts the worst." He stared at her intently. "Trust me, Karin. I lived without love or acknowledgement for a _long _time, and what came after that wasn't a picnic, but it still hurt a hell of a lot worse when I didn't have anybody at all. You don't want to shut yourself off from loving others or being loved. It might feel like a burden to you, but it doesn't have to be."

Huh…

That was an…

Karin didn't think she'd heard someone put it that way before.

Just as Karin was biting down on another mouthful of noodles, Naruto asked, "Is this about Sasuke?"

Karin nearly choked.

"What?!" she shrieked. "What makes you say that?! That bastard stabbed me! There's no way I would…" Her hands were shaking, just a little bit. "…Even if I did save him, that's just because…"

"I knew it," Naruto replied with a triumphant grin. "You can't hide the truth from me."

Karin glowered at him from the corner of her eye. "…Sasuke… He…" She rubbed her forehead wearily, cursing silently against the burning in her eyes, against her quavering voice. "Sasuke gave us a life and a meaning we had never had. He gave us back our freedom. He… I…"

Through the burning of Amaterasu, she had felt his desperation. Maybe not a cry or a scream of her name, but she had sensed his feelings nonetheless. Underneath the pain of the black flames scorching her skin. Even now, she couldn't forget what she had felt from him, even at the times when she most wished she could.

"So…" When she looked up, Naruto was looking at her with a face that seemed to be stuck at the crossroads between encouraging and apprehensive. "Just remember what I told you. I think right now you just really miss him. And Suigetsu and Juugo, of course," Naruto added quickly. "So what else did you want to ask about?"

_Here we go_. "Were you… ever curious about our clan growing up?"

"Hmm… Nope, can't say that I was."

Karin gaped at him. "_Seriously?_"

Naruto shrugged and finished off his ramen bowl. "I was curious about my _parents_, not my clan; I didn't even know I _had _a clan until I met Mom in Kurama's seal. I asked Sandaime about my parents a couple of times, but he always said he'd tell me when I was older."

"What?" Karin raised an eyebrow incredulously. "He seriously gave you a lame-ass excuse like that? And you just took that lying down?"

"Hey, I think he had pretty good reasons," Naruto retorted. "If I'd known I was Yondaime's kid I'd have been screaming it from the rooftops, which would have been _really _bad."

"Hmm, I suppose so." Karin smirked at him. "You are a huge loudmouth, after all."

"Hey!" But there was laughter in his voice.

"Me… I was never not curious. I wanted to know about the Uzumaki clan since I was old enough to understand all those stories my mother was telling me. I wanted to be close to my clan, my family. But I never really had any liberty to do so." Karin shut her eyes and stretched out her senses to feel out chakra signatures. "I was always stuck in one place. Couldn't move, couldn't run. I wasn't at liberty to find out more about my own clan. And you know what? I really don't want to be stuck anymore."

-0-0-0-

"So you're leaving today, then?"

Karin had felt Sakura coming up the stairs, so it wasn't like she was surprised to hear the door to their apartment open and hear Sakura's voice emanate across the room. It was almost a relief, to be honest. There was nothing illegal about her leaving—she'd cleared it with Tsunade—but leaving without saying goodbye to anybody would have made her feel like a fugitive escaping from prison (But without the sense of satisfaction her last prison break had given her).

Karin stuffed the last of her provisions into her knapsack and nodded briskly. She didn't quite meet Sakura's gaze as she said, "Yeah, I am."

When Karin did finally look at Sakura's face, she saw the other girl smiling at her. It wasn't exactly a happy smile, and it made Karin uncomfortable to look at. She was honestly afraid that Sakura was going to start crying or something like that, and Karin had never been good with waterworks, so that'd be a major disaster, no doubt. "I know I can't stop you from leaving; you're way too much like Naruto for that to work," Sakura remarked, almost too-lightly, "but I expect you to write."

"Umm… Sure." At least she wasn't crying. At least _Karin _wasn't crying.

"And not just to me. You'd better write to Naruto and Ino too; they're both going to miss you as much as I am."

"Sakura, you do realize that I'm probably not going to be in a position to send letters regularly, right?"

"Karin, we're _ninjas_. We find ways to make these things work. Don't try to get out of letter-writing just because you're bad at it or something. I bet you'd be really worried if one of us ran off and never wrote back."

"I… No, of course I wouldn't be! Like you said, we're _ninjas_. We can handle dangerous situations. I'd have faith that you were alright."

Sakura smiled at her again, a bit more cheerfully.

The two of them walked to the village gates in silence, Karin occasionally probing the chakra signatures around her. She wasn't sure why. Maybe it was just boredom.

This wasn't home, and anyone who looked at her could tell. That was probably why Tsunade had let her go so easily, with a sigh and a wave of the hand and a muttered _"I knew it wouldn't last. Okay, Karin. Try not to get killed out there, alright? I've seen enough kids die for stupid reasons that it's soured on me a lot."_

This wasn't home, and was never going to be home, not for her. Karin wasn't sure if she would ever be able to call any place in this world 'home', but she knew she never would if she didn't go searching for it. She'd certainly never be content if she just stayed here, and never found out another thing about her clan.

_Mama always swore there were more of us out in the world. I met Naruto, so the theory works. There has to be more than two survivors of the massacre, and there must be more information about the Uzumaki clan out there somewhere._

_I'm not going to find it here._

_Who knows? Maybe I'll even run into those three lugs again. It'd be… nice, running around with them again. Just for a little while…_

Karin waved to Sakura as she left the village, but didn't look back. She'd forgotten how much fresher the air smelled in the wide world, but then again, she had had so few opportunities in her life to smell or feel fresh air that maybe it wasn't all that surprising.

She left, and could do so without regrets, without uncertainty, without fear. For once, there were no chains on her.


End file.
